A Late Divorce (32 page)

We did not sober up, casting off our blindness, until my father was served up in a dish. He lay in it, large and distended from cooking, in a pale grayish aspic, while we sat there as silent as fish.

Bruno Schulz

 

“I wonder if I should confess that today I actually felt a twinge of impatience to see you. I wasn't late this time either, did you notice?”

“Of course.”

“Of course ... of course ... I needn't have asked. Here I am, I suppose you must be thinking, caught more and more in your net, corked in your test tube, pigeonholed in your file cabinet ... and yet, if I may comment in a brief parenthesis, your optimism is premature. How long is it now that I've been coming to you? Two or three months ... and each time I've said to myself, well, this is the last: it's time to end the game, pay the bill and say goodbye. And apropos the bill, by the way, I haven't asked you yet what you charge for the right to blabber away here ... and for the honor, of course...”

“One thousand five hundred.”

“Not bad ... not bad at all ... but not unreasonable either. Really not so steep. Some of your colleagues are far more avaricious. I'll pay the bill, then, and we'll part amicably. Oh, I'll pay it, don't worry about that. That is, I think I will ... yes, I believe I may ... after all, why shouldn't I? You deserve it ... if only for having controlled yourself and never made me get to the point. But do you really think I can be trusted to pay you?”

“I think you can be.”

“Good for you. Blessed are the faithful. No, don't be alarmed. You needn't think that I take your confidence in me as an undiluted compliment. But I will pay you. And after that, we'll see.... The main thing is to have done this too. To have been through it. Because two people can't conduct a civilized conversation nowadays without sooner or later broaching the subject of I and My Shrink, or My Shrink and I. With a mysterious smile and a gleam in one's eye one trades experiences, technical details, fees, descriptions of offices ... But broaching it only, mind you. It's no disgrace to admit it anymore, but there's still a limit to what can be revealed. And so now I'll be able to join the fun too with my own little adventure. I too was there. And what I found was part shopworn clichés, part sophisticated jargon and part slightly original rephrasing of old, familiar problems. A fifty-minute beauty treatment for one's dried-out ego ... but harmless. And incapable of causing any harm. With your kind permission, then, I'll withdraw my previous objections.”

“Then you did have objections?”

“Up to a point. And please rest assured that I'm perfectly aware of what they meant. My friends couldn't wait to tear into me and explain that any resistance in these matters simply reflects on the resister. I've run into that kind of sophistry before ... the automatic incorporation of all opposition to a system into the system itself. Oh, it's very clever ... but as I was saying, I'm officially willing to withdraw my objections as a gesture of social good will. I've paid good money for the privilege of finding out that the system can't do any harm ... at least not at the hands of the charming young gentleman who has taken me on this brief tour of it ... and has been kind enough to listen patiently to a stranger like me without betraying the least sign of boredom ... except, of course, for glancing at his watch once or twice during each session. Yes, and who has been so careful not to be provoked by me ... is that a smile I detect?”

“Is that another provocation?”

“Perhaps. As you like. But I see that it's simply water off a duck's back. You're an expert at the time-honored technique of returning all questions to the asker for further embellishment. A man who won't commit himself. Who takes care never to involve himself. (Perhaps, I might add in a small parenthesis, because there isn't much to involve, eh?) But still ... a fair and by no means unintelligent person whom I've done my best to entertain. Normality incarnate has listened to me sympathetically, and since it's offered me a cozy easy chair, a quiet, civilized room and a suitable time ... well, then ...”

“Suitable? How so?”

“I mean the time of day that you agreed to see me at, Friday afternoon from four to five. Is there a pleasanter one? Tel Aviv has quieted down, the banks are shut, the buses have nearly stopped running, the crowds are gone, there are less women in the streets too ... many less. The stores are closed also, though not all of them. Here and there you still can find some old irreligious grocer to sell you a squashed hallah and a liter of milk, or some boutique that goes merrily on selling its flimsy, latest-fashion sport shirts. It's a time for the nut and flower vendors, their stalls surrounded by the heavy weekend papers piled high on the sidewalks ... a lovely in-between time in which the old week is slowly being packed away. What we haven't managed to do in it will never get done in it now, and the possibilities of the new week don't seem very pressing yet. Even the stock exchange goes into the deep freeze for forty-five long, intractable hours ... and yet it's still a weekday ... a sacred one, though. The sad, stupid Sabbath with its hymns and sermons and long looks hasn't arrived yet with that oppressive sense that you're somehow losing out if you don't do something in a hurry. It's a time when, rain or shine, I like to cruise the streets of the north side, not far from the sea ... to run into the slow singles walking more erectly now because the world suddenly weighs on them less ... into the lost souls of all sexes whom life has excused from the compulsory family meal ... a most pleasant time to come to see you, and above all, to leave your office at. It came as a great surprise that you agreed to take me at it ... in no small measure that's why I chose you ... I'm just curious to know whether I'm the week's last case or whether you go on working like a beaver right into the Sabbath...”

“Would you like to be the last case?”

“Love to. I'm dying to be the last. I've thought several times of hiding behind the stairway to see if anyone came after me, but I didn't want to involve you in a scandal with the neighbors. Yes, I'd be thrilled to know I was the last ... to be able to think that as soon as I walked out of here the door opened and in came your wife sighing, ‘The weekend at last! Is that curly, handsome queer of yours gone? Come, there's cauliflower for supper!' ''

“Cauliflower?”

“I smelled it coming up the stairs. Perhaps she hasn't told you yet. You're in for a surprise.”

“Do you like cauliflower?”

“I hate it.”

“And is that really how you think of yourself—a handsome, curly queer?”

“Curly and handsome, in that order. I'm simply stating a fact.”

“Yes. I understand that. I simply wanted to know if that's how you thought of yourself ... if it was your self-image.”

“That's how others think of me too.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so. Do you doubt it?”

“I was only asking.”

“But what was I saying ... you had interrupted me...”

“You were saying that because of the suitable hour, the easy chair, the room ...”

“...I kept being drawn back here despite my decision to stop.”

“And these externals are all that ... keeps making you come back?”

“The whole atmosphere.”

“Yes. The whole atmosphere. Only that?”

“Of course not only that. You too have been clever enough to leave some loose thread at the end of every session ... some nagging question to bait me with. You'll cut me short in the middle of an idea or even a sentence in order to get me to return ... you always make sure to leave some buoy afloat for me above the confusion of the week ... which is why I've kept forgetting to tender you my resignation...”

“Forgetting?”

“Yes, yes ... though I know that there's no such thing as forgetting in this room ... that everything is significant. My tense young brother, you know, claims that all of human history, the whole hideous compendium of human misery, can be reduced to a few simple laws that he intends to discover. And he will discover them, I have no doubt of it ... he'll come up with something. All these significance freaks amuse me no end.... But what did I want to say?”

“You were saying that this time ...”

“What about it?”

“...you felt impatient to see me.”

“Righto. Listen, you really do hear and remember everything. You don't lose track of the thread in my wildest associations. I suppose you're glad to be told that I've become less indifferent toward you, maybe even more dependent.”

“Do you think that I want you to be dependent on me?”

“Why shouldn't you? It's natural. I like to attach people to me also—provided, of course, that the attachment can always be broken. There are lots of people who would like to tie me to their apron string too.”

“Such as?”

“There's a long list of them.”

“Your father, for one ...”

“My father? No, he turned me loose long ago. When the string got too tangled for him. Mow he's trying to steal a page from my book and be a free soul like me. You should have seen him getting off the plane...”

“He's really here, then?”

“Of course. Why shouldn't he be? A reconditioned father with a brand-new style. Youthful movements, a floppy, offbeat hat, even a snappy-looking valise. What else? Oh, yes, a long mane of hair in the back and color-coordinated clothing that some young lady must have picked out for him. My sister and brother-in-law were waiting for him in the terminal, but I had gone up to the observation deck to get a bird's-eye view ... to see this sixty-four-year-old psychosexual renovation job step out on Israeli soil and take his first gulp of its humid, gray evening air ... and above all, to watch him put on his self-pitying mask before passport control ... our poor murder victim ...”

“I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.”

“It was nothing.”

“Didn't you add something under your breath at the end? I didn't hear it.”

“No, nothing ... I was just...''

“But you did say something?”

“It's not important.”

“Does he make you angry?”

“Not in the least. You're barking up the wrong tree, come down from it....Do I sound angry to you? You're missing the whole point about my relationship with him. He simply doesn't matter to me anymore.”

“I had thought that was the reason for your impatience today ... that you wanted to talk about him...”

“But why? You've got your preconceived theories and you have to fit me into them. Father-son relations, oedipal conflicts, primal entanglements ... I'm sorry to have to spoil it all for you...”

“Last session you didn't stop talking about him. You were very tense about his coming.”

“Maybe I was. I wouldn't deny it. But it turns out to have been wasted emotion. As far as I'm concerned, his visit hasn't even begun yet...”

“In what sense?”

“In the sense that almost a week has gone by without our seeing each other. There was a typical, sentimental Kaminkean moment when he came through customs into the night. We hugged each other hard ... somewhat harder than I had counted on ... we even had tears in our eyes, although the real crying was courtesy of my sister. She's been the family's fount of tears ever since childhood. Her lawyerman stood smiling off to one side—I don't believe he even has tear glands.... But all this happened very quickly. It had begun to drizzle too. At which point, in the middle of all the suitcases and the packages and the small talk about the flight and the meals and the not having slept, a new leitmotiv emerged: his resemblance to me and mine to him. The three years that had gone by had apparently closed the physical gap between us. I had matured a bit ... perhaps grown slightly stooped ... my head had a more profound tilt to it ... while he'd lost weight, let his curls grow out, and adopted this youthful style. Maybe I had even served as his model from afar. In short, there were his and my genes showing through at last with a smile of mutual recognition. The lawyerman couldn't get over it. All he kept saying was ‘Wow! I never knew the two of you looked so alike!' ”

“Did that upset you?”

“Not exactly. But it was a good reason to be glad that we soon split up. They took him up north with them right away. After all, there's a reason for this rushed trip of his: the long-promised divorce ... the legal termination of their hundred-year war...”

“And has it gone through already?”

“Next Sunday, God willing ... or more precisely, God able. But I'm not at all sure that He will be able, because so far there's been nothing but disasters. They've been going about it in the most ass-backwards, roundabout way, making every possible mistake. To begin with, instead of going straight to her by himself, even on that first night, throwing himself at her feet and declaring, ‘Here I am, you summoned me ... forgive me ... I'm unworthy of you ... it's I who have been the true madman ... he went and fell into a gargantuan slumber in my sister's house. For a whole day. After which he sent that comical lawyerman to get her to sign the agreement. I warned them on the phone not to let that joker go alone because he would screw up everything, but he insisted on it, and came back that evening totally befuddled. She had made a complete fool of him.... Then on Tuesday, still instead of seeing her by himself and confessing, ‘Here I am ... I've come ... you're too good for me ... you can have the apartment ... I'm in a terrible mess over there ... have mercy on me...,' he made a pilgrimage to the Holy City in order to solicit moral support from my younger brother and his new wife—a romantic type with literary delusions whom father had never met, since he never bothered to come to their wedding. What better time to make amends for having missed it? So he slept over with them and finally, on Wednesday, organized a whole delegation to visit my mother—my brother and my sister and my brother-in-law ... they even dragged along their small son. All to soften the blow of having to face her ...”